


When Rachel Duncan sees her reflection

by cestmabiologie



Category: Orphan Black
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5717569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cestmabiologie/pseuds/cestmabiologie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she knows that it is beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Rachel Duncan sees her reflection

**I.**

When Rachel Duncan sees her reflection, she knows that it is beautiful. 

When she sees herself she feels a cold pleasure that swells in major chords up her spine. It’s a feeling that she can never replicate when she looks at the others. It’s an insult that they should try to wear her face. She’s pressed herself against mirrors until the glass was warm and almost flesh. Almost giving. She’s never wanted to press their skin against hers. She’s wanted to dig her fingers into their faces and tear them apart. There’d be no more comparison.

They are supposed to be perfect derivations of a single cell, but Rachel is sure that this must be a mistake. She’s different. She’s more. It’s almost satisfying to know this. What would be more satisfying is if all of her flawed copies were gone. Dead. Locked away. Suffering. She doesn’t care.

She is the only one who matters. 

  
**II.**

When Rachel Duncan sees her reflection, her father’s voice surfaces unbidden

_You’re my special little girl._

much to her annoyance. The words grind into her molars every time. Because _special_ should mean _unlike any other_ , not that what made her special to him was that she was exactly _like_ so many others. 

 

**III.**

When Rachel Duncan sees her reflection, she touches it with her fingertips. She does this nearly every time, but would never admit to a habit. Habits were for people who had to cling to something outside themselves. She refuses to reduce the gesture to something so simplistic. But when the spaces between her real and reflected fingertips disappear, as they often have and often do, she thinks

Yes.

That’s it. It wasn’t relief or disappointment. Just

Of course.

It was the same thought she’d had so many years ago when she was led into a room and told this is is where you belong. On the bed was a book that had been written just for her. Its words were cold and detached and didn’t seem to be about her, or about people at all, not like in books Rachel had read at home (this is home). She’d tested the doorknob and found it was locked. She’d pressed her fingertips to the mirror and she’d understood.

Yes.

She’d stared through herself and had considered what it was they might be expecting to see. It didn’t matter. She would give them nothing

Of course.

but she decided that one day she’d be on the other side of the glass. 

 

**IV.**

When Rachel Duncan sees her reflection, she sees her face. She sees emotions and fears toiling beneath her skin, but she knows that no one else can see them. She’s spent years composing her mask, protecting it in a perfect veneer.

She’d been meticulous. She’d never crack.


End file.
